“‘There has been no error made in this observation. All observational equipment is in full working order, and all personnel involved with this observation are of sound mind’…is it?”
At the Central Continent, in a camp built on the ruins of Isla Centurum, Suzuno Kamazuki grinned wryly at the message a Church knight brought from headquarters.
“Whatever is the matter, Suzuno, dear?” Emeralda asked.
“Nothing. But, you know, it can be quite nice to see someone who normally acts all stuffy and above it all fly into a panic.”
Suzuno, relaxing in her tent, read the parchment scroll over several times.
“This seal marks the document as top secret within the Church. It is sealed by holy magic, so nobody ranked lower than a parish bishop may open it.”
“Oh goodness, does that kind of holy magic exist? I’ve never heard of that.”
“Though it appears to be a normal red seal, there is a secret contrivance in the production of the wax. The only people who know how to produce it are the Archbishops, some of the cardinals, and the chief astronomer who sent this.”
“The chief astronomer sent it?”
“Yes. The moment has come sooner than expected…or, perhaps, at long last. And if the chief astronomer has spotted it, then before very long, every other observatory in the world will pick up on it.”
Rising from her work chair, Suzuno invited Emeralda out of the tent.
The sky was blue in the Central Continent; sunny, cloudless skies had persisted over the few days since the Devil’s Castle launch. In that short time, people were already telling exaggerated stories about this “miracle,” a divine blessing upon the devil-smiting Hero Emilia, the crusader force, and the Federated Order of the Five Continents. Every time she heard these tales, Suzuno had to prevent herself from laughing.
The sky above was beginning to segue into evening, the red moon and the blue moon hazily visible through the air in the atmosphere.
“I thought there was no option but to launch Devil’s Castle a second time from the demon realms…but it would appear they’ve found a far more innovative approach. Would you like to read it?”
Suzuno handed the message over to Emeralda. She read it, a tad puzzled.
“…Huh?”
She blinked several times.
“What? …Huh? What?”
Her eyes darted between the sky and Suzuno several times, a finger batting the parchment. She could tell this was beyond the realm of imagination—but to her, uneducated in the ways of astronomy, she couldn’t come to a ready conclusion about the impact this event would have. So she asked Suzuno.
The message from the chief astronomer on Isla Centurum was as follows:
“The red moon above is about to catch up with the blue moon at an incredible rate of speed. We cannot deny the possibility that the two may make contact very shortly.”
“So you mean to tell me the Devil King has moved the demon realm all by himsellllf? Goodness!”
“That appears to be the case.”
“And that’s going to result in a lot more than ‘nooothing,’ I imagine?”
Emeralda’s question was atypically uncertain.
Suzuno gave her a conflicted smile. “There’s not much I can tell you. But it will certainly make the world rather anxious. And after that… This is based merely on what I know from Japanese books and television and such, so please do not take it too seriously… But at worst, it may change the shape of our world’s coasts.”
“Huh? The coasts? …Ah!”
Startled, Emeralda looked at the moons in the sky. Suzuno, in a cold sweat, turned away from her face.
“Wait a minute, please! You don’t mean it will affect the power of the tides…?”
“Well, yes, I imagine it will…”
“What kind of ridiculous nonsense is that?! If you have these two enormous things moving this fast in such a short time, it’ll change a lot more than just that, you know!”
“Mmm, well, it used to be a single moon, after all…”
“…Bell… Did you think that once I heard the truth behind this world from Gabriel in Nerima, I would just settle down to a normal, boring life in Japan?”
“No. I assumed you would go on a lot of dining excursions.”
“Hmph!”
“Ow!”
Suzuno inadvertently blurted out exactly what she’d seen from Emeralda during her stay last winter. It was greeted by a swift chop to the crown of her head.
“Y-you did not have to hit me over it!”
“Hah! Hah!”
“O-ow! Stop! Not full force!”
“What kind of bad, bad girl bad-mouths other people’s eating habits without firmly guarding themselves?!”
The catfight continued for a while longer, Emeralda constantly on the attack and Suzuno desperately resisting.
“Huff…! Huff…!”
“Hee-hee-hee-hee-heee…”
The pointless bout between two of the strongest people on the planet dragged on. The nearby knights and Church officials silently kept a prudent distance, not knowing what was going on and not wanting to be caught up in it.
After about three minutes’ worth of karate chopping, Emeralda brushed away the sweaty hair stuck to her forehead and asked the panting Suzuno a question.
“Haah, haah, Bell… Have you ever heard the term ‘Roche limit’?”
“What does that mean? Is it Japanese? Rush… Roche limit?”
“More of a general Earth term, my dear. At its simplest, it means that, if a large celestial body is tooooo close to a smaaall celestial body, the tidal effects will cause the smaller one to disintegrate, unable to keep its form. The ‘limit’ is how close they have to be before it happens.”
“And what of it?”
“It means that ‘they used to be one moon’ is no obstacle, you know? They now exist as two separate bodies, so if they come too close, their gravitational pulls might destroy them both. And even if they somehow came together as one, if they’re inside the Roche limit with Ente Isla, there will be collisions and destruction; Ente Isla’s environment will be destroyyyed…”
“Oh… It will? Since when did you learn that, Emeralda?”
“During my ‘diiining excursions.’”
“…I apologize.”
Suzuno regretfully took her previous words back.
“But we’ll have to believe they took that Roche limit into account and made sure all was well. There’s nothing else we can do down here.”
“That’s truuue, but dear Bell, do you really think we or ‘Emiliaaa and her friends’ can defeat a god?”
“Where did that come from?”
“Breaking up moons, bringing them back together… No matter how powerful Alas Raaamus is, we’re talking about people with enough power to do all that loooong before humans arrived in Ente Isla. I can’t imagine we can outmatch them, can you? Heavens no!”
“That’s uncommonly timid of you.”
“Well, I’m not fighting on the front lines this time. It goes against my will to sit back and wait, naturally.”
“Yes, I think I know how you feel. I’ve always been a frontline person myself. All the desk work I have been faced with as of late bores me.”
“…But you don’t seem too anxious, dear?”
“No, because I trust my friends.”
She blurted it out so fast that it made her laugh at herself.
“Could you not say things like that? It gives me goose bummmps!”
Emeralda winced, visibly concerned.
“My apologies, my apologies. But there is no other way to put it. And, well, to tell the truth, should it come to battle, I have a feeling that it will resolve itself quite easily, in the end. With our victory, of course.”
“My, how connnfident of you. Might I ask for the reason, dear?”
Suzuno pointed at the couriered message in Emeralda’s hand. “That is Exhibit A. You would think the enemy would start attacking well before something like that happens.”
“Ahh…”
Even Emeralda could grasp what Suzuno meant now.
“We did exercise our due diligence before and after the day of the summit, certainly. But the fact that the heavens did not initiate any sort of attack until the demons launched their entire realm at it… It’s strange no matter how you think about it.”
“That it iiis.”
“And realistically speaking, the red moon must have set off on this journey several days ago. But neither here nor in the demons’ realms have we heard word of an attack. Based on that, I feel the heavens have little to no force left to deploy at this point.”
“Doesn’t that strike you as a little optimistic, dear?”
“Or do you think the heavens are so confident in their firepower that they can fend off an entire celestial body advancing upon them?”
“…Ahhh, yes, that sure doesn’t seem possible…”
It was a very simple matter. In the annals of warfare, it was no exaggeration to say that the stupidest move to make was to invite the enemy right into your stronghold for a single, climactic duel. A fight on one’s home turf was nothing more than a final struggle to delay the inevitable. The side with the advantage would never invite the enemy to its own territory, allowing them to damage the homeland—there was no point to it. If there was a surefire way to win, it involved fighting someplace where you couldn’t be hurt. Thus, if there had been no attack at all since the red moon began to move, it proved that the heavens lacked any long-ranged methods of assault—or the ability to wage war entirely, maybe.